Quite right. IF you know what to look for, the Documentation Center
points you to the Option "Table", and on that page you will find an
example that uses FieldSeparators.
My mini-rant has to do with finding the right thing to do when you
don't already have some idea of the answer. In this example, I would
imagine that someone would think: "I have some data to import that is
just like CSV, except the commas are semicolons. What would I do?" It
is not obvious to me that you would use the "Table" option in Import,
and further have to use the "FieldSeparators" option as a sub-option
to "Table".
The task is something a beginner might need to do. There should be a
documented example that shows how to do it that is more accessible,and
there should be a page for field separators (as plain English words)
that would have a tutorial about importing text or ASCII data with
different formats.
If I had the time, I might be inclined to write a documentation page
using the still unreleased DocTools and find a way to add it on to the
standard documentation. I imagine there could be a whole cottage
industry filling the gaps in the official documentation.
george woodrow
On May 9, 2009, at 3:21 AM, Bill Rowe wrote:
> On 5/7/09 at 6:34 AM, georgevw3 at mac.com (George Woodrow III) wrote:
>
>> In version 7, the option appears only on the page for Table, and
>> then only in the examples. At least that is what a search in the
>> Documentation Center gives. Also it is the only place that a Google
>> search gives for the on-line version of the Version 7 documentation.
>> Spotlight does not find anything in Mathematica -- perhaps the
>> plug-in is broken.
>
> If I type either "FieldSeparators" or FieldSeparators into the
> Documentation search field and hit retrun, I get a result with
> one entry linking to the documentation page.
>
> And if I type FieldSeparator I get the same link and a message
> asking if I meant fieldseparators.
>
> All of this is using
>
> In[4]:= $Version
>
> Out[4]= 7.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) (February 19, 2009)
>
>
>